RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)

  • Appeals court rules “Fat Leonard” must serve full sentence in US Navy corruption scandal

    Source: San Diego Union-Tribune

    “Leonard Glenn Francis, the Malaysian contractor known as ‘Fat Leonard’ at the center of the worst bribery and corruption scheme in U.S. Navy history, must serve the remainder of his 15-year prison sentence, according to an appeals court ruling that became official Monday. … He argued in part that U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino violated his Fifth Amendment rights and abused her discretion in November 2024 when she handed down a sentence that was 40 months longer than what prosecutors recommended. … The Malaysian contractor admitted that he spent decades bribing a rotating cast of officers from the Navy’s 7th Fleet in the Western Pacific, showering them with lavish dinners, luxury hotel rooms, top-shelf liquor, prostitutes and cash. In turn, those officers steered ships to the Southeast Asian ports controlled by Francis and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia.” (01/13/26)

    https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/01/13/appeals-court-rules-fat-leonard-must-serve-full-sentence-in-navy-corruption-scandal/

  • Bulgaria: Snap Election Likely After Reformist Group Rejects Bid for Regime

    Source: US News & World Report

    “Bulgaria’s second-largest ‌parliamentary ​grouping, the reformist PP-DB, ‌declined a request on Wednesday from the ​president to try to form a new government, increasing ‍the likelihood of a ​snap election in the European Union’s poorest member ​state. Prime ⁠Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov’s coalition government, backed by GERB-SDS, resigned last month after weeks of street protests against state corruption and a new budget that would have increased some ‌taxes. In line with the constitution, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev ​on Monday ‌had formally asked ‍the ⁠conservative GERB-SDS to form the government which they rejected. On Wednesday PP-DB, which seeks closer relations with the European Union, also rejected the mandate, BTA agency reported. Radev is now expected to offer a chance to govern to another party ​and then if they refuse he will have to call a snap vote, Bulgaria’s eighth in just four years.” (01/24/26)

    https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-01-14/snap-election-likely-in-bulgaria-after-reformist-group-rejects-bid-for-government

  • Claudette Colvin, 1939-2026

    Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]

    “Claudette Colvin, who helped to ignite the modern civil rights movement in the US after refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus, has died aged 86. Colvin was 15 when she was arrested on a bus in Montgomery, nine months before Rosa Parks gained international fame for also refusing to give up her seat. … Colvin was detained on March 2, 1955, after a bus driver called the police to complain that two [b]lack girls were sitting near two white women in violation of segregation laws. Colvin refused to move when asked, leading to her arrest. … Colvin was briefly imprisoned for disturbing public order. The following year, she became one of four [b]lack female plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit challenging segregated bus seating in Montgomery. The case was successful, impacting public transportation throughout the US, including trains, aeroplanes and taxis.” (01/14/26)

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/14/unsung-us-civil-rights-pioneer-claudette-colvin-dies-aged-86

  • Iran: Regime warns of regional states of strikes on US bases if attacked

    Source: Reuters

    “Tehran has warned U.S. allies in the Middle East it will strike U.S. bases on their soil if Washington attacks Iran, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday, following President Donald Trump’s threats to intervene in support of protesters. The death toll from Iran’s unrest climbed to almost 2,600, a rights group said, as the clerical establishment seeks to quell nationwide protests posing one of the biggest challenges to their rule since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. … Trump has said military action is among the options he is weighing to punish Iran over the crackdown.” (01/14/26)

    https://archive.is/EuMrB

  • US House GOP seeks to hold Bill Clinton in contempt for skipping Epstein deposition

    Source: NBC News

    “The Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced Tuesday that it will seek to hold former President Bill Clinton in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear for a deposition as part of the panel’s probe into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. ‘As a result of Bill Clinton not showing up for his lawful subpoena, which again was voted unanimously by the committee in a bipartisan manner, we will move next week in the House Oversight Committee markup to hold former President Clinton in contempt of Congress,’ Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., told reporters Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill. The committee had scheduled a deposition with Clinton for Tuesday morning, as well as a deposition with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Wednesday. In a letter to Comer, the Clintons said they didn’t plan to appear for the depositions.” (01/13/26)

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-gop-seeks-hold-clinton-contempt-skipping-epstein-deposition-rcna253780


  • Cheap Credit Doesn’t Create Economic Growth — It Makes Us Poorer

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by Soham Patil

    “Net Present Value (NPV) is a popular decision-making criteria used by firms to make key, crucial choices about how to allocate resources across an economy. Net Present Value forecasts temporally discount future cash flows to their present value to check whether a project creates value. If a project has an NPV greater than zero, it creates value. On the other hand, if a project has an NPV less than zero, the project loses value. NPV forecasting isn’t perfect and there are often assumptions baked into any forecast but there is one particular type of error that occurs most often and has disastrous consequences.” (01/13/26)

    https://mises.org/power-market/cheap-credit-doesnt-create-economic-growth-it-makes-us-poorer

  • Tariffs Have Hurt, Not Helped, the US Economy

    Source: Foreign Policy
    by Keith Johnson

    “The U.S. economy, after a tumultuous year of tariffs and trade wars, appears to have performed better than feared earlier in the year, with annual GDP growth through the third quarter of about 2 percent, including a surprisingly healthy bump in the last reported quarter. But that, contrary to what U.S. President Donald Trump says, is not because of tariffs but in spite of them. And 2026 looks set to be an even rockier year on the trade front, with further negative implications for U.S. economic performance.” (01/13/26)

    https://archive.is/ZOK5Y

  • Insurance company subsidies are no prescription for lowering healthcare costs

    Source: Orange County Register
    by Ken Calvert

    “These days, the cost of healthcare is on everyone’s mind. Since the passage of Obamacare in 2010, the cost of health insurance on the individual marketplace has increased nearly 170%, placing a significant financial strain on families and businesses. Despite advancements in medical technology and treatment, many people are finding it increasingly difficult to afford the care they need. This trend is particularly troubling as it disproportionately affects the most vulnerable populations, including the elderly, low-income individuals, and those with chronic conditions. However, rather than lower healthcare costs for Americans, Democrats want to simply extend a COVID-era Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidy, rife with fraud, to the tune of $400 billion over the next ten years.” (01/13/26)

    https://archive.is/L4cGM

  • The Biggest Myth About Trump’s Base (And Why Many Believe It)

    Source: The Atlantic
    by Yair Rosenberg

    “To judge by recent accounts, Donald Trump’s intervention in Venezuela has imperiled his standing among his own supporters. Traditional-media outlets have warned of a MAGA schism, as have some high-profile right-wing influencers. … The theory of a MAGA rupture over Venezuela has a certain surface plausibility. It’s also completely contradicted by what masses of Trump’s backers are telling pollsters.” (01/13/26)

    https://archive.is/5h0QX

  • AI Will Create Work, Not Decimate It

    Source: Persuasion
    by Emily Chamlee-Wright

    “”[T]he fear beneath the fear is that human potential has hit its outer bounds, and that from here on out, technology will always surpass human effort in both quality and cost. From that vantage point, sweeping, top-down remedies seem like the obvious course. … To my economist’s ear, some aspects of this narrative ring true. Basic economic theory predicts that, for a given level of quality, producers will replace high-cost inputs and processes, including those that involve human effort, with lower-cost alternatives. Such substitution effects are part of the entrepreneurial function. But the other part of the entrepreneurial function is to search for complementarities: new configurations of resources, human and otherwise, that generate new streams of value. It’s this part of the story that, more often than not, goes missing in democracy-focused conversations about AI.” (01/13/26)

    https://www.persuasion.community/p/ai-will-create-work-not-decimate

  • Abolish ICE: It Is a Threat to Americans’ Safety and Freedom

    Source: The UnPopulist
    by Shikha Dalmia

    “Many government agencies have good intentions but can produce bad outcomes. However, there is one that has bad intentions and produces evil outcomes: Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. In this Trump administration, as in the previous one, its purpose is to hunt down and eject people whose “crime” is that they can’t obtain a piece of paper from the government authorizing them to live and work in America. … America got along just fine for 227 years till ICE, the monster child of the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, was spawned 23 years ago. It should never have been created in the first place, but now that Trump has turned it into a rights-trampling, rogue agency that shoots first and asks questions later, as the killing of Renee Good, an American citizen and a mother of three, demonstrates, it deserves to be shut down.” (01/13/26)

    https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/abolish-ice-it-is-a-threat-to-americans

  • When Physicians Are Replaced with a Protocol

    Source: Brownstone Institute
    by Joseph Varon

    “Medicine is defined not by the mechanical execution of tasks, but by the assignment of responsibility when outcomes are unfavorable. Writing a prescription is straightforward; accepting responsibility for its consequences — particularly when considering comorbidities, social context, patient values, or incomplete information — is far more complex. Throughout my career, this responsibility has continuously resided with a human who could be questioned, challenged, corrected, and held accountable. When Dr. Smith makes an error, the family knows whom to contact, ensuring a direct line to human accountability. No algorithm, regardless of sophistication, can fulfill this role. The primary risk is not technological, but regulatory and philosophical.” (01/13/26)

    https://brownstone.org/articles/when-physicians-are-replaced-with-a-protocol/